Reading this thread got me to thinking. There are dumbass jokes at my work that are made on a much too regular basis, and everyone still laughs at them like it’s the first time they’ve ever heard it (except me- I just roll my eyes and call their jokes busted). Off the top of my head, they include:
“Come out of the closet!”
-We have a closet off of our work area where we keep some supplies and our purses. Any time someone is in the closet during work hours getting something from their purse, someone ALWAYS has to say it, and the rest ALWAYS have to laugh. It’s not funny, people. And it never really was! I don’t take offense to it or anything, but jeez, it’s old and boring. Stop saying it and stop laughing at it!
“Fire me first! Me first!”
-Whenever my (unfunny) supervisor jokingly threatens to start firing people (and it is a joke to her, not serious) there is no end to the number of people that pipe up, “Me first! Fire meeeee!!!” Then they all giggle like schoolgirls on nitrous, like it’s the funniest joke they’ve heard all year, when we just had this same interaction yesterday! And the day before! It’s not funny anymore! Stop it!
My coworkers need to get some new jokes, that’s for sure. I’ve tried my best, but you know, one person can only do so much.
Do you have lame jokes at your workplace that you’re sick of? Do share them, so that I may go forth tomorrow and offer new lame jokes and my coworkers will have some new ones to last for many years to come.
Oh, yeah! One of my co-workers (not a cow-orker) had stopped in at a grocery store early one morning to get a couple of doughnuts a treat for her daughter, and while she was waiting to pay for her purchase, there was a lady there picking up a cake and having a complete meltdown because “there are not enough sprinkles” on the cake. We’re talking tears, the manager trying to calm her down, and the whole bit. At about 6AM. So, now, when we have one of those customers who are upset out of all proportion, we say they just didn’t get enough sprinkles. Then we giggle.
“I can’t work under these conditions!” announced in tones of righteous indignation about truly trivial issues – shortage of blue post-its, one cinnamon cake-donut, a coworker wearing an especially cute (or ugly) shirt, anything and everything trivial.
I still think it’s funny, but I haven’t worked there since last February.
Years ago, someone started a list on one of our dry-erase boards titled “Things You don’t hear at Starbucks”. It stayed up for a few weeks and had about 12 entries of really gross stuff that happened or that people said while at work (a veterinary hospital - it’s definitely very gross stuff to people who don’t work in the profession). It was side-splittingly funny at the time.
People will still quip “You won’t hear that at Starbucks!” when someone remarks something gross. Kinda not funny anymore, and newer people don’t get it.
I worked with my father (58) for about 6 years doing residential construction/carepentry. My old man is a stereotypical Bible thumpin, Rush Limbaugh lovin, freedom fries eatin kinda guy.
At the end of every single coffee break, everysingle day, and without fail, he would say “Well boys, contrary to the theory of evolution, this house isnt going to build itself.” with a condescending smirk shot in my direction.
By the third time I heard it I realized what the claw end of my 22 Oz. framming hammer was for.
Someone recently applied for a job with our team. In his application he emphasized his capacity to maintain quality standards because of his attantion of details.
When checking something for someone else now it has become the standard response, “Joe this looks OK to me, good attantion of details,” or “Joe these numbers don’t agree with the report we did last month. Come on man, attantion of details.”
Another with a venerable history. A couple of years ago I asked one of the guys what the date was. He was busy cutting code and without looking up just said, “Sysdate.” It just broke me up. Now we use it as shorthand for “I don’t know and I don’t really care. Find out for yourself.”
And we have a whole pile of words that make sense to us but make us look like idiots to others like wrongosity: the degree of error in a result.
And when you make stupid coding errors it is customary to blame the compiler, “I’ve just found another bug in SQL. If you select the wrong column from the wrong table you don’t get the result you wanted.” Everyone will mumble agreement at how weak this is.
It’s not really a joke - but it is dumb. I know I’ve mentioned it before, but it fits here.
If two people are in the same vicinity of each other, wearing similar clothes, the next person to walk by will invaribly say, “I didn’t know it was (same clothes) day!” or, “I didnt’ get the memo that it was (same clothes) day today!”.
If both people are wearing a blue shirt, or a striped shirt, or a similar polo someone has to comment on it.
“What is this, Russia?”
“Hey, government employees, heh heh heh!”
And yelling out my name in a fake southern accent. Not that I’m southern, it just falls out of their pie holes better that way.
I used to work construction. Every time somebody had to bend down or over in front of somebody else, the inevitable comment would be, “line starts here!” If we both bent down or over at the same time and our hardhats hit, we’d say, “turtle fucker!”
There was a time I was working on some scaffolding about 15 feet up. We were trying to allign some H-beams with spud wrenches. I kept dropping mine, and so had to crawl down to get it. Finally, about the eighth time, I yelled, “Mother fucker!”, in a distinct tone. Every time the foreman saw me after that, he’d say, “mother fucker!”.
“You’re killing me,” every time somebody fucked up.
I used to do software phone support. Our running joke for customers who were too stupid to live was “Thank you, drive through.” It was pretty funny for a short time. Then the place stopped hiring competent people and starting hiring any asshole who had a pulse. They couldn’t master the software, but they learned “Ha ha ha, drive through!” almost immediately.
Well, like the OP, my boss has an ongoing tradition of firing people. Most of us get fired on a weekly basis. But somehow he never follows through, so we’re all still here drawing paychecks. heh.
Oh, and there’s my secretary. Out of the five of us in the office, three (including my boss) are Hispanic. Every now and then, my secretary will make a point to say something about “white people” loud enough for me to hear. And I respond by shouting, “Pat, why you gotta be racial!” I know, both of these sound pretty awful, but really, it’s all in fun.
Oh, god, yes. Evidently today is Yellow Sweater Day. I got the memo, as did two other people, but somebody missed it. Sigh. I want to go home and change my sweater now.
One time we were having server problems, as you will with servers, and one of our customers got quite overly upset about it. He told us we “obviously don’t care about [his] business [doing well]” (He’s still our customer, 5 years later)
Every so often, when discussing something heavy we’re about to take on for a client, one of will interject that we obviously don’t care about their business.
We have horrid, lame Medicare jokes. That’s right - I manage Medicare products.
Which is why we often refer back to a Steven Colbert segment where he somehow managed to make Medicare Part D sexy in the creepy, bad one-liner sense. (It’s referenced here, but I couldn’t find the actual clip.) It was just sad. Even worse, it was freaking hysterical to all of us.
Does that count as a running gag?